Where Magic Is Made - Chapter 3
by Velvet95
Summary: Pro-bending Circuit Submission - Semifinals (airbender)


**[AN] Check out** IGdude117 and The Element of Air for Chapters 1 and 2

 **(action) screaming**

 **(character) Toph**

 **(quote) "The happiest place on Earth" - Disneyland**

 **Element used: air (singing)**

 **Word count:** **2395**

* * *

"Are you _positive_ she's here?" Asami demanded of her assistant.

"These are the directions I received, Miss Sato," the assistant stammered, small beads of sweat breaking out on his forehead. They stood together staring at the path leading into the interior of the plot of land Asami had been desperately trying to buy for months with no success, thus preventing her from completing her constructing project, thus causing shareholders, park employees, and tourists to complain loudly at her. There was no way Asami was going to risk her Satomobile on that narrow track so they were on foot and she was prepared to march a long way if necessary.

She was going to get that paperwork signed.

"Come on, let's get this over with."

Her assistant straightened his tie and fell in behind her, the briefcase holding the necessary documents clenched tightly in his hand.

As they passed a rickety looking gate a huge wall of earth slammed up in front of them, barring their way.

"Go away!" A voice bellowed.

The assistant whimpered and cowered behind Asami.

Asami crossed her arms. "We had a deal! You wanted to sell and I wanted to buy. Why won't you sign the damn paper and take my money?"

"Changed my mind!"

Asami rolled her eyes and gritted her teeth. "You want to renegotiate the price, is that it?"

"No!" Another wall of earth popped up closer to them, forcing them to step back. "Go away!"

"Miss Sato, can we please go," squeaked the assistant.

"No!" Asami shouted. "We had a deal, and I've been trying to hold up my part of it for _months_!"

"Deal's off!"

A new wall of earth propelled them backwards away from the gate. The assistant shrieked before he turned and ran, holding the briefcase over his head as he fled.

Asami sighed as she picked herself up off the ground and dusted off her pants. She turned reluctantly away but shouted over her shoulder. "This isn't over!"

"Oh yeah it is!"

* * *

Asami pulled into her parking spot and sat for a moment, seething. She had dropped her assistant off at his car with instructions to go home. The briefcase with its unsigned documents sat next to her on the passenger seat, mocking her failure.

"Shit," she muttered, then pushed herself resolutely out of the car, fully intending to bury herself into the design work left to be done on the new Airbender's Glide roller coaster. Maybe it would help her clear her mind and come up with a better idea for approaching the irascible landowner.

"Miss Sato!"

Asami jumped and screamed in shock. Before her stood a motley group of people with expressions ranging from sheepish to outraged. She pressed a shaking a hand to her heart, feeling it thumping furiously.

"Who are you?" she gasped out. "This is a restricted area!"

A dark-skinned woman with intense blue eyes stepped forward. "I'm here to complain! We spent months planning this trip, only to find you've shut down my favorite section of the park!"

Asami stared at her. _You have got to be kidding me…_ "Unfortunately we've had unforeseen delays. Many, many, frustrating, infuriating, unbelievable delays." She ran her hands through her hair in frustration. "So if you wish to visit Airbender Alley you'll have to come back another time."

The woman glared at her. "Do you have _any_ idea how hard it was to even get this time away? With my luck it will be years before I get to come back. This is supposed to be the happiest place on earth, and I want to get happy!"

"She really does," spoke up a round-faced man with green-eyes standing nearby. He wore a Funland t-shirt that was too small for him, highlighting an impressive musculature. Next to him stood a tall dark-haired man wearing a propellor hat and looking distinctly uncomfortable in it.

"Look," said Asami with more than a touch of impatience. "This is a restricted area. I'm sorry that you're so disappointed with the state of the park," she sighed heavily. "But you'll have to get in line since pretty much everyone is letting me know how angry they are about it." She shook her head abruptly. "If we're all lucky there will still be a park here next time you come to visit."

She turned to stomp off but was stopped by a hand on her elbow. She jerked her head to see the blue eyes softened with compassion.

"Hey, I'm sorry, I didn't realize…"

A warm hand grabs Asami's and shakes it enthusiastically.

"Let's try this again," the woman says breathlessly. "I'm Korra, and these are my friends, and we love Funland, so how can we help?"

Asami blinked. "That's very kind of you, but really it's not necessary."

"You might as well let her help," drawled the teenaged boy standing nearby, his arm around a pretty dark-haired girl. "She will whether you want her to or not, and you might not like what she does if you don't give her instructions." He grunted as the girl elbowed him in the ribs. "What? It's true!"

"Shut up, Kai," Korra grumbled. "But really, Miss Sato, how can we help?"

Asami suddenly giggled, feeling somewhat hysterical. Korra looked at her a little worriedly.

"Are you okay, Miss Sato?"

"Please, call me Asami. I suddenly have a really bad idea…"

"I love those!"

Bolin and the teenagers nodded. "It's true, she does."

"And I'd be willing to offer guided tour of the park's backstage and all you can carry out of our gift shops in exchange."

Korra's eyes gleamed. "For that I will move heaven and earth for you. Tell me what you need."

"Okay, here's my problem…"

* * *

Korra cursed under her breath as she picked her way across the the raised wooden walkway that led over a small creek. It creaked and swayed alarmingly at each step. Beyond a small house squatted with an aura of menace in a copse of pine trees, as if escaped from one of the grimmer fairy tales involving ovens and children lost in the forest. It was incomprehensible to her that this could possibly exist in the midst of the surrounding urban sprawl.

Behind her Bolin whimpered. "Are you sure this is the right place?"

"Do you see any other big plots of land adjacent to Funland inhabited by crazy people?"

"Very funny, Korra," he groused.

"Hello?" she called out, cursing herself for the squeak in her voice.

"Whaddya want?" a raspy voice bellowed. Korra could just make out the front door cracking open.

"Are you Toph Beifong?"

"Who wants to know?" There was a pause then the front door opened wider, revealing a short, stocky figure in the doorway. "You're the brat who's been calling me about buying my land."

"Actually, I'm not. I'm-" Korra bit off her retort abruptly and took a deep breath, straightening her shoulders. She reminded herself firmly that she had faced down hostile takeovers. "My name is Korra and this is Bolin. We're here on behalf of Asami Sato who has been trying to complete the sale of your land to Future Industries Funland for some time now, so I'm here to close the deal." She felt proud that she was able to keep her voice more or less steady.

"Ha!" The woman shuffled over to the porch steps and sat down, patting the aged wood as she sat in a way that reminded Asami of the reports that said the old woman was allegedly blind. Once seated she pulled out a pipe and stuck it between her teeth, a match in her fingers. "Thought for sure Funland was going to send their security team over here to muscle me out or something." She seemed disgruntled about this and lit her pipe with a huff. Her faded green robes bunched around her thin knees as she flicked a wrist, raising a small mound of earth up into a bench.

Korra accepted the clear invitation to sit and sat down, resting her elbows on her knees as she considered the old woman. Bolin hovered nearby protectively. "You act like you'd prefer that," she said wryly, then her eyes narrowed as she saw the older woman harrumph and bite her lip. The light dawned. "You would!" she burst out. "You wanted them to send security out here!" She shook her head in disbelief. "What, you wanted them to send out guards and have the newspapers report how they're trying to take advantage of you?"

"Of course not," Toph scoffed. She sucked hard at her pipe before blowing the smoke out irritably while she muttered under her breath.

Korra cocked her head. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch that."

Toph glared in her direction. "I wanted to see my daughter, okay? She's security for Funland."

"Wait," Korra said slowly. "You've been giving Asami the runaround because you want her to send your daughter out to harrass you? You know most people would just call..."

The woman coughed.

"Let me guess," Korra guessed, glancing at the other woman. "It's complicated."

Toph snorted. "Something like that."

"Okay," Korra nodded, as if this was a perfectly normal conversation to have. "If I get her here to see you, will you finally finalize your deal with Asami?"

Toph blew out a smoke ring with a pensive expression. "Yeah, I'll take that deal." Then she cackled. "If you can convince her to come here, you'll have earned it!"

* * *

"Come on, Bolin!" Korra whined over her shoulder. "Kai and Jinora have been following the security people around and think they found the daughter."

Bolin trotted after her, still chewing on a barbecued turkey leg. "I can't help it," he retorted around his mouthful of meat. "I'm hungry!"

Korra snagged the leg out of his hand and took an enormous bite. "Well I'm starving but you don't see me stopping at every food cart between her and park headquarters do you?"

Korra grinned at the outrage on Bolin's face.

"Give that back!" he yelled.

"Gotta catch me for it!"

They tore through the crowds. Korra giggled as she continued tearing chunks off the turkey leg as she ran, Bolin promising breathless retribution behind her. She finally skidded to a stop in front of a brightly painted building where Jinora and Kai stood, eyeing the the crisply dressed security personnel that were going in and out of the front door.

"See?" Korra demanded as she tossed the mostly consumed leg back at Bolin. "You can go fast while you eat."

"Damn it!" Bolin sighed at his depleted snack, then took the last mouthful before pitching the bone into a nearby trash can. "Where's Mako by the way?"

"Don't ask. Let's just say he followed the wrong security guard onto the wrong ride."

Korra snickered then turned to Jinora. "So, whadda we got?"

Jinora leaned forward with a worried expression. "You said the daughter was the Chief of Security right? Well, we saw her, and she looks _fierce_."

Kai nodded in agreement. "I swear she looks like my old parole officer. Made my balls retract when I saw her."

"Ew, Kai! Too much information!"

Korra waved this away impatiently. "Never mind all that. Are you sure she's still in there?"

"Unless she snuck out the back."

Korra thought hard, then a positively evil grin settled over her face. "Okay, here's the plan-"

"Chief? I'm sorry to bother you-"

Lin looked up as Opal leaned through the doorway. Behind her she heard loud voices and the sound of scuffling in the hallway.

"Hey, you can't go in there!"

"Miss! MISS!"

"Hey, stop!"

The was suddenly propelled forward through the doorway where he sprawled into the floor. A small horde of invaders stepped over him, led by a well built young woman with piercing blue eyes.

"Hi!" she announced to a stunned Lin. "We need to talk." She winced as she took in Opal, still on the floor. "Bolin, help her up."

Bolin picked Opal up and carefully set her back on her feet. "Sorry about that," he apologized. As he looked at her more closely he started to blush. "Gosh, you're pretty."

Opal's cheeks darkened and cleared her throat, several times. "Um, thanks?" She caught Lin glaring at her and forced herself to look stern. "You can't be in here, you know."

"Okay, look. We desperately need your help, so we'll get out of here on one condition."

Lin leaned back in her chair and glared at them. "What do you want?"

Korra beamed at her. "I need you to come say hi to your mom!"

* * *

Asami entered headquarters in search of her security Chief; there had been a ruckus on the Small World ride for the second day in a row and she wanted that nipped in the bud. Things were bad enough with Airbender Alley closed and she didn't want the park to lose its reputation as a safe haven for families.

She stopped dead as she saw half a dozen security guards hovering around her security chief's office door. She cleared her throat and watched in grim amusement at the resulting embarrassed scramble.

Through the door she could hear raised voices and the sound of someone singing at the top of his lungs. She blinked. It was the "Small World" song. As she moved to approach the slammed open and she with shock that Korra and her friends were faced off with Chief Lin. Korra's friend Bolin's face was red and his eyes squeezed shut as he sang, his lungs heaving as he gasped for air.

" _It's a Small World, aaaaafter aaaaalll. It's a small, small, wooooooorrrrld…"_

"Fine," Lin shouted in exasperation. She threw up her hands. "I'll do it! I'll do it! Just make him stop!"

Kai slapped Bolin on the back of his head and mercifully the singing stuttered to a stop.

Lin whirled to see Asami standing there with her mouth hanging open. "And you!" she growled, glaring at Asami. "You _owe_ me!"

Asami's gaze fell on Korra, standing behind Lin in triumph. Her blue eyes were bright and warm, and her smile caused Asami's heart to stutter briefly in her chest. As she met Asami's gaze, her eyebrows went up in clear challenge and Asami found herself grinning back.

"I have a feeling I'm about to owe a lot of people a lot of things."


End file.
